The Suffering Review

|Tap-Repeatedly|FFC Archives1

           

The Suffering PC Version

Review by Old RoosterJuly 2004

“Bloody Hell!” —Comment by Mrs. Old Rooster

It takes a good deal for my proper British wife to utter such an expletive. However, when she gingerly peeked over my gameplaying shoulder to view a particularly graphic scene from The Suffering, she just couldn’t help herself. And my response was: “Exactly, my dear.”

I love a pleasant surprise, especially since I’ve been a bit bored lately with copycat games. Picking up The Suffering “on spec” (as the Mrs. would say), I hoped it was more than a Resident Evil-type gore fest or a prison break-out. The nasty box cover hints at an electrocuted convict, perhaps coming back to life to wreak havoc. Ignore that. The Suffering is a wonderful, immersive “haunted prison island” thriller driven by an involving story with open paths, good and evil choices, and three different endings. Sure, there are plenty of monsters to dispatch (this is a “shooter” by category, after all), but the entire project is so richly embellished by the overarching storyline that the monster bashing seems quite secondary to the chilling exploration and desire to see the next cutscene.

A Nice Place to Visit (Not!)

How about a little flight or boat ride to Carnate Island? Hey, you could then be “in Carnate”—little religious play on words there; sorry. Only 10 miles off the coast of Maryland, this fictional vacation haven has a rich history, worthy of your consideration. Puritans, among my favorite folks, first settled there in the 17th century, had a few fun witch burnings, but then encountered an unexplained problem several decades later leading to the disbanding of the group. Not to be discouraged, a wealthy family purchased this garden spot in the late 19th century, enjoying the occasional trauma and strange incident until moving away 20 years later. Within the next few years, the good Dr. Killjoy founded the Carnate Institution for the Alienated (C.I.A.), using the mansion and its grounds. This was abandoned in the late 1920s, with unpleasant rumors remaining about Killjoy’s methodology. But I’m sure they’re exaggerated—barbarism and depravity, indeed. How could that be? He was a doctor, took the Hippocratic Oath, and must have been a caring man.

In the 1930s, the Feds stepped in, likely appreciating the scenic value of Carnate during Maryland springtime. They didn’t get out much, though, using the grounds as a secure POW site, with rumors of numerous executions abounding. Finally, the State of Maryland couldn’t resist the opportunity to use Carnate for its own purposes.  Employing the real estate maxim of “location, location, location,” they not only created a maximum security prison for the very worst offenders of society, but also used several methods of execution—ranging from the formalities of electric chair and lethal injection to informal allowing of prisoners to have at each other. As we said, wouldn’t you like to make a little visit, do some exploring? Talk to the “natives?” Lots of history. You can take notes, perhaps write a nice article. C’mon along.

“My First Day on the Island, I Knew My Life Was Over” —Torque

We join and play as Torque, a newly arrived prisoner, who has been convicted of the grisly murder of his wife and children. Our “hero” has no sooner settled in than an earthquake hits, shaking loose not only mortar and electrical workings, but also some most unpleasant denizens not officially enrolled in our holiday retreat. In a fashion reminiscent of the Half-Life story, but much, much, more grisly, unnatural spider-like creatures with deadly spikes drop from the ceilings and spring out from darkened alcoves. Playing Torque from a third-person perspective (first-person also an option), you attempt to work your way through and out of Abbott Prison. Not only is there the challenge of the monsters, guards and other prisoners, but also there’s an underlying mystery to be resolved, not only about Abbott and Carnate, but also about yourself. You receive messages from your dead wife and have occasions to make “good” or “evil” choices, thereby affecting your character and the game outcome. This has been done before, but not as smoothly and effectively as with The Suffering.

Even though The Suffering is technically a “port” from the console version, it plays as if it was designed for the PC from the beginning. WASD or arrow keys control Torque, with complete mouse-look and mouse button control. Key controls are minimal (map, inventory, open), with the screen very uncluttered (health, flashlight and insanity meters). You begin the game, after the earthquake shakes open your cell door, by exploring your cell wing and finding a knife and other soon-to-be-needed items—batteries, map, ammunition, Xombium, shotgun, etc.

“Look at That! Oh, My Goodness, These Are Terribly Frightening!”  —Prisoner (Sanitized Comment)

The Suffering has some very foul (or do we say “fowl” around FFC?) language and is rated “M.” Right out of the gate, you’ll hear the “f word” and the kind of rough sexual and other comments you might expect in this kind of “vacation” facility. So be warned.

Relatedly, the voice acting is outstanding and professional, aided by a terrific script. When you hear the kind of audio work done in The Suffering, you have more of an appreciation for the importance of this facet of a game, something we sometimes do not experience with other titles, especially within the adventure genre.

Accompanying this voice work are superb sound effects. Although the graphics are only moderately good (a likely carryover from console roots), the full 3D sounds are compelling. While exploring, turning on switches, gathering items, you’ll suddenly hear the nearby scream of a man who has died horribly. Scraping noises (spider blades on the floor) approach menacingly from your right speaker, moving closer and closer, more toward the center—and you! A ringing phone, overheard exclamations (“Everything’s under control—aargh …”), doors closing, wiring shorting out, your own hallucinations (or are they?)—all of these build tension between your confrontations with the specters of Abbott Prison.

The Hulk Returns

Depending on choices made throughout the game, Torque has the option of building up his Insanity Meter. This allows a frightening transformation to the “bad” Torque, producing a Hulk-like personage capable of wreaking damage and havoc that’s effective but almost out of control. Sometimes the Hulk, or Mr. Hyde, just needs to come to the fore. Contributing to the overall delusional setting are three spirits following our hero, sort of like the Ghosts of Christmas Past from Dickens, but very twisted and nightmarish.

There are a number of “key-door” puzzles throughout the game, but the most interesting and thought-provoking dilemmas come when you need to make the kind of good versus evil choice indicated above—a choice of your behavior, realizing this may have permanent effects on your personality and the outcome of your attempted escape.  Interestingly, these different paths also lead to replayability.  I’m currently in my second run-through of the game, on a different difficulty setting (four are offered), making “nice guy” choices, taking alternate routes, and finding a contrasting experience.

In terms of choices, and to be a bit more prosaic, I should comment that The Suffering installs and runs beautifully on my very moderate system (P4, 1.8, 512 RAM, nVidia 3 video card). There are sufficient options on the menu available to allow it to be playable on an even lesser system. Further, although there are console-like checkpoints for auto saving, you also have the option of saving anywhere, an important feature for many of us with short attention spans.

“Bollocks, I’m Outta Here!” —British Guard

The Suffering comes together as a remarkable survival-horror game. I used to write reviews with a breakdown of components in the game (graphics, audio, interface, etc.). But The Suffering integrates all elements so well into the final product that I hardly thought about that sort of analysis. With satisfactory graphics, outstanding audio and acting, involving mystery-like story, smooth gameplay mechanics, The Suffering moves to the top ranks, joining such titles as Clive Barker’s Undying and Eternal Darkness. If you can deal with (or maybe enjoy?) the grisly setting, monster bashing and rough language, the game comes as highly recommended—an essential purchase, Gold Star level.

What I Like Most About The Suffering

  • Overarching story is compelling;
  • Script and audio effects are first class;
  • Controls and mechanics are very PC friendly;
  • Choices lead to different outcomes.

What I Like Least About The Suffering

  • Monsters can get a bit tiresome;
  • Rough language may offend some. The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Surreal Software Publisher: Encore Software Release Date: June 2004

Available for: PlayStation 2 Windows Xbox

Four Fat Chicks Links

Player Feedback

Screenshots

Click to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge Click to enlargeClick to enlarge

System Requirements

PIII 1.0 (P4 2.0 recommended) 128 MB RAM (512 MB recommended) 32 MB video card (64 MB recommended) 2 GB free hard disk space

Where to Find It

GoGamer 24.90 (PC version) (on backorder as of 7/21/04) Amazon.comPS2 version 45.90Xbox version 49.99

Prices/links current as of 07/21/04Links provided for informational purposes only.  FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into by any party(ies).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

Pages

Top

Category Archives

Top

Blog Posts

Top

16 Responses to Screw the Internet

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    God damn, Scout, I’d never heard of this Lanier fellow, but that’s pretty profound.

    Information is not a manufacturable item… as you said, we are making less and less. This is either indicative of a larger-scale societal transformation, or a bad thing. I’m afraid I’m inclined to assumed the latter.

    Thanks!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Steerpike, that was exactly the argument Lanier was having with callers on the BBC. Lanier was all fatalistic about society’s drop in real productivity while his opponents claimed that this was a huge transformation and that he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all. If you notice, the web address of that first Lanier link is well.com. I mean, that is old! The Well?

    Lanier’s thoughts were pretty much echoed by David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire. Here he speaks with Bill Moyers about the fate of paid journalism in the face of the web.

  • Spike

    I’ve read many criticisms of Facebook et. al.  I’ve also read contradictions of those criticisms, namely, that social sites are making people more connected than ever.  I think that that connectedness is an illusion.

    For several months at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 my daughter badgered me to join FB.  I could connect with her and some of her friends that I know as well as renew old acquaintances with some of her friend’s mothers.  I finally signed up so she’d quit the badgering. I used to check in every day to see what daughter and friends were saying because if I didn’t she’d ask if I saw her post, or a friend’s post. 

    What I’ve learned is this:

    1.  “Karen Likes John’s photo (or post)” IS NOT communication.

    2.  The reason I lost contact with some of these “friends” in the first place is that we no longer had anything in common.

    3.  I am bombarded with so many ads in so many places that I can do without more.  My policy is to never click on ads on FB or on many other sites. 

    4.  While FB’s original mission was connectedness/communication, I think it has become “Let’s make as much money from these fools as we can.”  “Wanna have gobs of fun playing a free game on FB?”  That game is gonna cost ya big, folks. 

    5.  Social sites are just more places where your personal info can be stolen.  There’s enough risk out there as it is.  Additional risk is not providing any valuable payoff for me.

    6.  Why do I want to “friend” a certain handbag manufacturer?  Why do I want to take a quiz that tells me what my personality is?  FB content providers tell you up front that if you click the link to take their quiz (goes for other types of content as well) you are giving them permission to access your profile info.  That’s ok.  I’ll also give you my SSN, bank account number and the key to my front door.  Not.

    7.  Don’t even get me started on the number of people who start an account in a pet’s name, and even have the pets making friends and posting.

    “…he was just too old to grasp the coolness of it all.”

    No, it’s just that most of us get to the age when we demand a bit of wheat with our chaff.

    At 38 my daughter is older than the average demographic of social sites although I know that that demographic is skewing up.  She seems to be cooling on FB.  Some of her 221 friends are as well.  Many of them do want some wheat.  When more cooling has taken place I will unjoin.

    I wonder, though, what new fad will come along when FB, Twitter and others run their course?  MySpace, anyone?

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    My favorite line from the BBC interview was when Lanier was comparing MySpace and Facebook. He admitted that MySpace had some eye gougingly bad pages but said that he liked the “strangeness” of personalities that you get with it. With Facebook, he claimed that it was like looking at a tax form. A boring, watered down, bland presentation of people.

    I joined Facebook almost exactly a year ago. Apart from sparking up a new friendship with a very dear buddy, I’ve gotten about zero back from it. I sort of read with bemusement the activities of people I hardly know and could care less about. And when you consider how much information the devs harvest there…it’s scary. Lanier claims that the information is so far worthless to the investors and that the whole thing has become a sort useless ritual serving no purpose. He claimed that Google’s ads on the other hand will probably turn out to be the greatest advertising model ever created. He also thinks Google should stop before it’s too late but says they probably won’t. Just a glance at the side bar reveals about 4 ads for advertising agencies. Heh.

  • lokimotive

    Has anybody read Anti-Oedipus? I’m slogging my way through it (the third attempt I believe), and Deleuze and Gauttari’s ideas seem relevant to this in a way that I’m not sure I can articulate. This probably has something to do with a conversation I was eavesdropping on that, coincidentally, mentioned a lot of Deleuze and Gauttari’s theories. Someone was talking about another theorist (whose name I didn’t catch) who was defending “Generation Y” essentially. The argument went that Generation Y is an example of a “de-Oedipalized” cultural group (that’s Anti-Oedipus jargon, just stay with me). Apparently this meant that they made connections in a different manner than other generations, the idea of bricollage was brought up and things were generally mired in a lot of reasons why I don’t have my Masters in English. What I got from it was this Generation Y shoots out connections everywhere and attempts to make up a whole idea with them as opposed to relying on predefined pathways. In Deleuze and Guattari’s language: the schizo as opposed to Oedipus. In language that probably makes sense: Peer to Peer as opposed to client-server.

    So, of course, no one’s really right. I’m skeptical of the idea that Generation Y (full disclosure: I’m 29 so I’m part of that group) has enacted some sort of paradigm shift in how to operate in social systems, but facebook has changed how I connect with people. Then again, it’s not like I don’t value face to face communication.

    The future is somewhere in between. I’m really not cynical enough to believe that we are at the end times of civilized society because of Web 2.0. Instead society will change and stay the same because that’s what it does. Facebook is not the future; it’s probably a rung up the ladder though.

  • kaythomas

    To me, Facebook and Twitter are 0’s. They are not worth my time.  I do not care what someone I know or don’t know did a half hour ago or will do next.  I have met up with people on facebook I had lost contact with.  But, in truth, the reason I had lost contact was I was not that interested in staying in contact.

    I think for many people the Facebook/Twitter world is great.  For me it has nothing to offer. 
    kay

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    Tap has an automated device that twits… tweets… whatever whenever someone posts a new article. Just in case it draws some visitors.

    To be honest, though, I’m on Kay’s side of the fence, I don’t understand Twitter and I don’t understand why it’s so popular. I barely care what I’m doing from moment to moment, why should anyone else?

    I don’t get Facebook either, though I’m a member to keep track of all the girls who wouldn’t give me the time of day in high school.

  • Lewis B

    Tweets are great for giving me snippets of news.  If I like what I’ve read in the short paragraph tweets give, then I will visit the main page for that tweet. (Very good for following world news, favourite columnists, etc.)

    However, reading tweets from people such as “Just woke up, Madonna is giving me a massage while I shave my nuts” is not my idea of a good read.

  • Toger

    I use tweets the same way Lewis does. Of the people/things I follow, if the tweet is interesting I’ll follow the link to read the entire article. I follow fairly intelligent people, so I’m not subjected to the idiocy of “Just brushed my teeth while sitting on toilet”.

  • Gregg B

    @loki: I’m afraid I’ve not heard of them. I’m a couple of years below you so that puts me in the same Generation Y as well. I read through a few of those links Scout posted as well as a few more on Lanier’s new book “You Are Not a Gadget” and it took me a fair while to get to the crux of what he is saying and he has a lot to say, most of which I find very confusing.

    As a graphic designer the whole “everything is becoming advertising” thing has been bothering me for years. The incessant barrage of advertising is like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul, which sort of makes me a hypocrite. After all the years of tuning my art and design skillz my creative abilities have amounted to nothing more than crafting pretty ads that sell things. Non of it speaks any truth or has any sort of ‘beauty’; it’s just stone cold mechanical capitalism. Granted there are ads out there that are beautiful, clever and visionary but the front line stuff is as dull as it gets. I’m sure this isn’t strictly what he’s getting at but it’s definitely something that irks me in relation to Scout’s last remark.

    Anyway, I remember Twitter just exploding in what seemed like the space of a week and I still can’t fathom the allure of it aside from providing a direct stream of consciousness from famous folk to their ravenous fans. I wish I’d thought of it to be honest. I can see the creators sitting around a table staring at Facebook and then saying “I know! We make a website that’s just about status updates! You can even update them with your mobile phone!”.

    With regards to Twitter news snippets, unless it’s for a phone, I don’t see the point because RSS feeds do a great job. At present too great; I simply can’t keep up with my subscriptions. There’s too much information on this super highway.

  • Jen

    Twitter is officially the dumbest thing ever.

    That said, it looks like I will have to be the official “tweeter” for my day job before too long. I can’t wait! (roll eyes)

  • xtal

    I’m with everyone else here. I’m glad to say I’ve never signed up for Facebook; I fear that if I ever had I would have long ago died from loss of brain cells due to reading moronic status updates. It’s as Kay said: ninety-five per cent of people with whom you lose contact are probably no longer in your life because you have nothing left in common. And echoing Steerpike’s comment, me eating toast and jam on a Sunday morning watching Fawlty Towers is not interesting, not to me. Why the hell would anyone else give a shit?

    Twitter I signed up for about a year ago, not really understanding what it was. I now understand it…but don’t care to use it often. I have made 58 tweets over that year. I suspect for some that is a daily or weekly average. It’s just Facebook status updates without all the drunken photographs. I admit it can be mildly useful for following, say, a news site. Usually when I hop on my twitter (once every two weeks??) it reminds me that I should read The Onion more often. That’s about it.

    Let’s see… looking at the actual humans I follow, um… Wil Wheaton is happy that the LA Kings have won 9 games in a row, my sister-in-law thought our dinner tonight was “delicious,” and Kevin Smith’s batteries are recharged … or something.

    Wow, my life is already getting better!

    p.s.  <—– Gen Y'er (can we call ourselves that?) and proud that when I Google my own name a real estate company pops up.

  • Fraser

    Twitter is exactly as useless as the person who’s writing it. If someone is telling you boring shit over Twitter, it’s the person wasting your time, not the delivery channel.

    MySpace is the same, but it seems more intrinsically garbage because for some reason almost everyone who used it was an intellectual embryo with a fetish for unreadable hyperneon text on top of garish uninteresting photos. Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.

    That’s the argument against the whole of this post: the internet isn’t evil, but the people who use it might be. It’s people who make business models successful; people who make money flow to advertisers instead of artists, by buying into the advertising.

    This has been a pretty didactic post, so let me compensate by saying VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOOO!!!

  • Gregg B

    Good point about not blaming the delivery channel Fraser. I seem to recall Lanier saying that he preferred the personality that MySpace has over Facebook despite its Craptastic Pages of Illegibility. I’m trying to think of something intelligent to follow that up with but my brain is failing me at the moment, so…

    VIDEOGAMES WOOOOOO!!!

  • Jason Venter

    Fraser, I really loved your following comment:

    “Facebook’s great trick is that it prevents you from realising that most of your friends would make a brutally hideous homepage for themselves if they could.”

    I think that may just be one of the most hilariously true comments I’ve read in a comments area on any video game web site ever.  That sounds overly dramatic, I know, but I actually mean it.  Kudos to you!

  • Mike "Scout" Gust

    Yeah but don’t you miss all the ugliness of MySpace? All those hideous pages at least had personality or what Lanier called the “strangeness of the person” to them.

    I actually don’t agree with a lot of what Lanier says esp “the hive mind must die” stuff. But I do think he is right about the spirit shriveling blandness of Facebook.

    I also suspect that Twitter is going to be around for a while. It will be more and more influential. People are simply not as willing to ingest huge amounts of information in the form of pages of text anymore. The delivery systems that succeed will be those that can communicate a lot of information in a short amount of time. Most days we want “glimpses” or “snapshots” not total immersion. Lewis, Toger and Fraser are correct in that you get out of it what you decide to follow.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.